Adobe Photoshop CC update:

Camera Raw 8.1

Welcome to the latest Adobe Photoshop CC bulletin update.
This is provided free to ensure everyone can be kept upto-date with the latest changes that have taken place in
Photoshop (and are also applicable to CS6 users).
This bulletin describes the latest changes to the Camera
Raw interface. For a complete description of how to use
these new Photoshop tools, with diagrams and step-by-step
tools, I recommend you buy the Adobe Photoshop CC for
Photographers book.

Camera Raw 8.1

Camera Raw 8.1 was released to coincide with the launch
of Lightroom 5 and ahead of the Photoshop CC release. This
version of Camera Raw is designed to do a number of things.
Photoshop CS6 remains as a current shipping product sold as
a perpetual license alternative for those Photoshop customers
who dont wish to subscribe to the Creative Cloud and access
the latest Photoshop CC program. Camera Raw support is
therefore to be continued for Photoshop CS6 users so that
this latest Camera Raw 8.1 release offers support for the
latest raw camera formats and lens profiles. By coinciding with
the launch of Lightroom 5, it provides a bridge between that
and the Photoshop CS6 program, allowing CS6 customers
to open Lightroom 5 images that have been edited using the
new adjustment options (such as Upright or Radial filters) via
Camera Raw 8.1. If you are using Photoshop CS6 this means
you can read files that have been edited using the latest
adjustments, but you wont be able to edit settings that would
otherwise be new to Photoshop CS6.

Figure 1 The new Camera Raw 8.1 interface.

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

New interface
The main thing you will notice thats different is that the tool
and panel icons have been updated (see Figure 2 and Figure 3).
Camera Raw 8.1 also provides support for HiDPI capable
displays.

Figure 2 The new Camera Raw 8.1 tool bar.

Figure 3 The new Camera Raw 8.1 panel icons.

Workflow options
The Workflow Options dialog can be used to set the default
settings for when files are opened in Photoshop or saved as
an output image. Previously, when you clicked on the blue
hyperlink text (at the bottom of Figure 1), this would open a
Workflow Options dialog with a limited range of options that
allowed you to choose from one of four RGB output spaces,
select the desired bit depth, megapixel size, resolution and
output sharpening.
The new Workflow Options dialog (shown in Figure 4) now
lets you do more. For a start, the Color Space options now

Figure 4 The Camera Raw 8.1 Workflow Options dialog.

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

allow you to choose any available profile space as the output

space. Note, if you are using Photoshop CS6, the menu options
here will still be limited to Adobe RGB, ColorMatch RGB,
ProPhoto RGB and sRGB. But if you are using Photoshop CC
you can choose other profile options including printer profiles,
CMYK profiles, or Lab space even.

CMYK proofing
So one of the more obvious benefits the new Workflow
Options dialog brings is the ability to soft proof in Camera Raw.
Some of you will be aware that soft proofing was introduced in
Lightroom 4 and very effectively allows you to preview in the
Develop module how an image is likely to look when printed.
The new Workflow Options dialog allows you to kind of do
the same thing. It does not provide a total workflow solution
the way Lightroom does, but when you select a profile such
as a CMYK profile this will affect the way the preview image
is displayed in the Camera Raw dialog and you now also have
the option to select a rendering intent and compare between
the use of a Relative or Perceptual conversion. The Workflow
Options dialog shown below in Figure 5 shows a CMYK profile
selected.

Figure 5 The Workflow Options dialog with CMYK profile selected.

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

 Essentially, when you select a specific CMYK profile the

preview adjusts to show how the image you are editing in
Camera Raw will look when output or saved as a CMYK
TIFF, PSD or JPEG pixel image. When the Output options are
configured in this way everything you adjust in Camera Raw
is filtered through the prism of the selected CMYK output
profile. You can also check the Simulate paper & Ink box to
try to simulate how the image will appear when printed. The
underlying image is still being edited as a full raw image, it is
just the preview that is modified to provide a more realistic
interpretation of the final output.

Output proofing and the computer display

The same thing applies when you select an inkjet printer
profile. The Camera Raw preview aims to show the outcome
when printing to a specified printer profile.
The one thing to point out here with soft proofing in
Camera Raw is that the accuracy of the soft proof view can
only be as good as the monitor display you are using to view
the image. Most standard LCD displays have a native color
gamut that is not that different from the sRGB color space.
Consequently, a basic display isnt going to help you much
when evaluating color output if the gamut of the display
is smaller than the output space. However, even in these
situations the soft proofing can still be valid in terms of judging
the tone contrast. You will at least be able to get a sense of the
tone appearance of the intended print output and modify the
contrast accordingly. A better answer is to use a professional
quality display that is able to match closely to the Adobe RGB
gamut. That way you should be able to at least gauge CMYK
color output reasonably accurately.

Saving soft proofed raw files as smart objects

Prompted by my colleague, Jeff Schewe, it became clear that
you can take this one stage further. If you check the Open in
Photoshop as Smart Objects box at the bottom of the Camera
Raw Workflow Options dialog (Figure 5), this allows you to
open a raw image as a Smart Object in Photoshop. Now, if you
happen to select a CMYK profile that matches the intended
print output you can edit your raw images seeing how they
would look when printed in CMYK. When you save the smart
object image as a TIFF, it can be placed directly into an InDesign
layout. The following steps summarize such a workflow.

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

1 To begin with, I opened the Workflow Options. I set the output space to the intended
CMYK output space, set the rendering intent in this case to Relative and checked the
Simulate Paper & Ink box. The long side image dimension was adjusted to match
that of the page layout column width. In the Output Sharpening section I checked the
Sharpen For box and chose Glossy Paper from the menu using a Standard Amount. I
also checked the open in Photoshop as Smart Objects box.

2 In Camera Raw the Open Image button now showed as Open Object. I clicked this
to open as a smart object in Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

Photo: Jeff Schewe

3 Here you can see the Layers panel view of the image opened in Photoshop as a
smart object, which I then saved as a TIFF that could be placed into an InDesign
layout such as this.

4 When exporting from InDesign as a PDF, I needed to go to the Output settings,

select the intended CMYK output space and choose Convert to Destination. This
would mean that during the PDF export, the images such as the one shown in step 3
would be converted to CMYK from the original raw data directly.

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

Summary of the proposed soft proofing workflow

Let me now go back over the steps described on the previous
two pages. The Workflow Options in Camera Raw were set
to the CMYK profile of the intended CMYK output and the
size settings were adjusted to match the column width. The
rendering intent was set to Relative (because this tends to
be the optimum rendering intent for most colour images) and
the simulate Paper & Ink option was checked so the preview
gave a reasonable indication of how the final image would look
when printed.
In the Output Sharpening section I chose to apply a
standard glossy paper output sharpening setting. Ideally, I
would prefer to apply a custom Photoshop action that applied a
more precise form of sharpening designed for CMYK printing.
However, the paper sharpening settings offered here are the
same ones used in the Lightroom Book module for sharpening
files for output for Blurb books printed on an Indigo press.
Experience shows that this sharpening workflow, while not
intended for CMYK repro, does appear to work well for this
purpose.
The raw image was opened as a smart object in Photoshop,
preserving all the raw data. The Camera Raw settings remained
editable and the Camera Raw preview allowed me to make
color and tone adjustments while being able to preview the
CMYK outcome.
The smart object image could be saved as a TIFF and placed
in an InDesign layout. It would still be possible to double-click
the layout image to open it in Photoshop and double-click the
smart object layer thumbnail to edit the Camera Raw settings.
At the PDF export stage the PDF settings were set so that
when the PDF generation took place, the original raw data
was read, the Camera Raw adjustment settings applied and
the image data then resized to the desired pixel dimensions.
Next, the image data was sharpened for output and converted
to CMYK according to the settings configured in the Export
to PDF dialog, making sure the Camera Raw Output and PDF
Export Output settings both matched.

Camera Raw soft proofing in practice

These few simple additions to the Workflow Options dialog
have some interesting implications. The ability to select various
output profiles is definitely a big step forward and gives
photographers the option to edit their photographs while being

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

able to preview the expected print outcome while working

in Camera Raw. That much is easy enough to implement and
get to grips with. The other thing we can now do is devise a
non-destructive Camera Raw to print workflow in which the
raw data remains completely editable right through to the
final Export to PDF stage. This is seemingly a good thing to
do, but comes at a cost. I would not choose to do this with
the Photoshop books I produce because of the sheer number
of images involved. Saving raw images as smart objects will
result in image files that are very large and always much bigger
than a rendered TIFF resized to match the required output size.
This would work if the rendering intent is to be the same for
all printed images. In practice I tend to use both Relative and
Perceptual rendering intents when converting images to CMYK
as well as different black generation profiles. Now, if it were
possible to achieve a link between Camera Raw and InDesign
whereby you could assign the rendering intent and profile in
the Workflow Options and have these picked up at the Export
to PDF stage, this would make such a workflow more practical.
Maybe this will be on the cards for the future?

Camera Raw 8.1 and Photoshop CS6

As I mentioned at the beginning, Photoshop CS6 users can
also install and use Camera Raw 8.1. Adobes policy is that
those who choose to work with Photoshop CS6 rather than
subscribe to the Creative Cloud, will be able to access all the
Camera Raw updates for Photoshop CC, starting with Camera
Raw 8.1. This appears to be roughly in line with stated policy
for Photoshop CS6 support: that the Photoshop CS6 program
will continue to be supported by Adobe with program updates,
including Camera Raw. If a future Mac or PC operating
system update means rewriting code, Adobe say they are
committed to doing so for CS6 customers. In the case of
Camera Raw 8, updates will be provided, starting with 8.1 that
allow Photoshop CS6 users to read the latest raw file formats.
They will also be able to open raw or DNG files created in
Photoshop CC or Lightroom 5 that contain Camera Raw 8
edits (such as Upright or Radial filter adjustments). These can
be read using Camera Raw 8.1, but you wont be able to edit
them.
To sum up, Photoshop CS6 customers who use Camera
Raw 8.1 will see the new style icons and access the new
Workflow options dialog (limited to the four main RGB output

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

spaces). They will be able to read files edited in Camera Raw

using Photoshop CC, or Lightroom 5, but wont be able to edit
the newly introduced settings such as Upright adjustments
or Radial filters. Basically, if you are now using Lightroom 5
to manage and process your raw files and have decided to
continue using Photoshop CS6 in place of Photoshop CC, the
Camera Raw 8.1 update provides the link you need between
these two programs.

Adobe Photoshop CC update: Camera Raw 8.1

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